claaa7 wrote:just posted this in ep. 3+4 spoilers but this is so brilliant that it needs to be restated. posted by seriouslynotcool on Reddit 11 hours ago
Within the room Cooper enters at the beginning of the episode, we see a massive electrical outlet on the wall, and time appears to alternate forwards and backwards. This alternating direction of time is, I feel, meant to represent alternating current. Alternating current is how we deliver electricity via the wall sockets in our homes. Rather than having to send electrons in one direction for miles to their destination, we just reverse their direction over and over 60 times a second (50 outside of the US). This allows for the transmission of electricity over long distances as safely as possible. The opposite of alternating current (AC) is direct current (DC). DC is what comes out of a battery, and - which is important, here - out of a car's cigarette lighter.
The switch that the woman (called "Naido" in the credits) pulls on the top of the building changed that huge socket on the wall from AC to DC. The room is no longer going back and forth in time. The building is all set to DC mode. Naido did this to help Cooper enter the car where the Doppelganger was. He was nowhere near an AC wall socket, he was in a car in the mountains away from civilization, with only a DC car lighter socket nearby.
What Naido (or Mike or The Arm) didn't know, though, was that Dougie had been created. He was basically a double-doppelganger who the ring from the lodge somehow made possible. So when Coop was all set to go through the DC outlet in the car, he actually ended up going through an AC wall outlet to where Dougie was. This made it so that his mind is now all kinds of scrambled up. That gold ball which (I'm guessing) represents what Coop needs to function properly was filtered out and left in the Red Room. Coop is trapped in a body that can't even seem to retain memories, as we see when he just repeats the last few words of somebody else's sentence.
Thankfully, the inhabitants of the lodge have imbued him with extraordinary luck. The slot machine spree was one very obvious form of it, but also his interactions with certain people have shown them being seemingly unable to process his behavior objectively. So things aren't completely hopeless for our Special Agent.
EDIT: Oh, and Lynch has talked about alternating current electricity before, specifically regarding his script for Ronnie Rocket.
"[Ronnie Rocket is] about a three-foot tall guy with red hair and physical problems, and about 60-cycle alternating current electricity."
dronerstone wrote:Ronnie Rocket evolved into a tree. Nice.
And SPOT ON about the AC/DC hypothesis being exactly the way Lynch thinks. Ha! I like that.
We could have helped out Naido by sending her an inverter. Geez, instead she sacrifices her life to go to DC. It is a fun theory and quite possible.
DKL must have had some issues with electricity as a kid. I was shocked early in life and until my teens, I got paranoid around a substation that was nearby. I used to have to take a 2 block detour to avoid it. The hum and crackles were very ominous to me. It tapped into something deep inside, which is what DKL is doing to us.
wxray wrote: I was shocked early in life and until my teens, I got paranoid around a substation that was nearby. I used to have to take a 2 block detour to avoid it. The hum and crackles were very ominous to me. It tapped into something deep inside, which is what DKL is doing to us.
I know exactly what you mean. I got shocked by a wall outlet when I was about 5. Literally threw me across the room and I blacked out in shock and didn't tell anyone it happened.
Plus, there was a concrete-housed transformer station one block away, right near the woods. It didn't do anything but sit there and hum. Was a pretty monolithic and mythical place in my childhood and teens, we used to go skateboarding there and it was where we had our first cigarettes. Still creepy when I think of it, and it's actually still there in the same form (I'm 35 by now).
The AC/DC thing is a nice theory. I'd think of it more about analog/digital in general, rather than AC/DC specifically, given that 15 is the "digital version" of 3 (in terms of clocks).
I don't buy it though.
Cooper ended up going through the "digital" portal (which would relate to the cigarette lighter of the Mercedes), and ended up coming out of an AC outlet.
It seems there would be more clues if this theory were the case, and since the theory is now out there - there would be people spotting clues to back it up by now (look how observant some people on here have actually been so far).
Any body made the connection between the couple having sex in front of the glass box in NYC and the demon appearing and the whole Jack Parsons/ Thelema angle ( sex magick ) from Frost's " Secret History... " book?
On all of the various 3/15 theories, I haven't really seen any incorporate the 6 on the electrical pole in FWWM. It's the same kind of large number and same exact font as in the mauve world. And we hear The Arm traveling through that pole.
Elric99 wrote:On all of the various 3/15 theories, I haven't really seen any incorporate the 6 on the electrical pole in FWWM. It's the same kind of large number and same exact font as in the mauve world. And we hear The Arm traveling through that pole.
My thought on this, is that in numerology one always reduces a double-digit number by adding the two digits together until one reaches either a single digit, or 11 or 22.
So, 15 is really 1+5=6, 6 obviously has some negative connotations in general and may in TP be directly associated with The Arm.
So Naido was helping Cooper avoid going directly back to the Black Lodge.
Interestingly, 3 is associated with family, and Cooper ends up as part of a strange family with Janey-E and Sonny Jim.
One more thing about the AC DC electricity. BadCoop being alone and away for a few days as he tells Daria might be calculated with him staying away from electricity. His destination seems to be the prison as he had downloaded all its info yet he was headed out west in the op. direction
